Expellees Tell Tales: Vampire Stories and the Role of Rumor in Post–1945 Central Europe

With the end of World War II, accusations of guilt and victimhood associated with the war itself intermingled with long-standing xenophobic and racist fears to create an atmosphere full of superstitious beliefs. Those whom the world deemed guilty of having fallen victim to a political ideology of euthanasia and world dominance sought answers for their - as they now saw it - gullibility. In some (less convincing) instances, Germans blamed Jews for having brought about anti-Semitism. In more compelling stories, German expellees from former German lands turned to a less tangible enemy: vampires.

In this paper I argue that anti-Semitism mixed with indigenous tales of vampirism amongst Yugoslav partisans, giving German expellees a literally fantastic story of persecution. In a macabre turn of historical interpretation, German expelles usurped the role of victim from the Jews - including their near-total extermination by Nazis - to become the victims themselves of a supernatural power bent on draining these Germans of their blood. The vampire, long associated with a Jewish stereotype (c.f. the film "Nosferatu"), allowed German expellees to turn attention away from their role in the Holocaust so that they might seize the stage, victims of a euthanasia program by vampires, an idea so monstrous that it  - at least for some Germans - eclipsed the horror of gas chambers. The bleeding of the German race, an act at once reminiscent of Jewish slaughter but also of Christian martyrdom, mitigated German guilt while bringing in a supernatural element - perhaps one that might also be blamed for the Holocaust. Sources for this paper include expellee testimony, memoirs, Yugoslav tales of vampirism from the medieval to the postwar period, and police documentation regarding reports of vampires.